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February 20, 2015
Q. On your flight from London to Sydney, your pilot announces she'll be “flying blind,” that is, without looking out the windows. How worried should you be?
A. Surprising to most people, pilots don't generally need windows to fly a plane, says Martin Powell of Monarch Airlines of the United Kingdom, in New Scientist magazine. The climb, cruise, descent and sometimes actual landing can be done “blind,” using complex monitoring equipment. Weather radar allows pilots to avoid storm cells and generally at typical altitudes no cloud is thick enough to obscure “cumulogranite” in the flight path (what pilots call mountains). At times, limited forward visibility — for example, due to fog — may require special ground equipment and operational procedures.
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